


heart-flower

by hoars



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Black Cat - Freeform, Car Accidents, Courtship, F/M, Flower Romance, Flowers, Hallucinations, M/M, Maiming, Soul Manifestation, Suicidal Thoughts, allergic reactions, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoars/pseuds/hoars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heart-flowers are a reflection of your heart, mind and soul, if you're a romantic. Scientists call them a reflection of mental and emotional health instead. As long as you're happy or content, the flower is healthy too. But if you're distraught the petals will close or brown. It depends person to person, emotion to emotion. When Derek tells Stiles to take care of it, he means, take care of me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heart-flower

**Author's Note:**

> You know all those daemon AUs? Yeah this is that but with flowers because flowers are awesome. Un'betaed but if you read it fast, you won't be able to tell the difference!
> 
> I hope someone loves this nearly as much as I loved writing it.

i.

The orchid’s branch has no blooming flowers.

Not anymore.

The plant is just a long green line that curves down, like it remembers the weight of petals.

Derek keeps his orchid in his car, in the cup carrier.

ii.

Stiles keeps a lot of flowers in his room.

 Some are real. Some are plastic. His heart-flower hidden amongst them.

When his mom began dying, the blush petals began to brown at the edges and curl back into itself.

Scott was kind enough not to say anything when he noticed the only browning flower in his bedroom.

iii.

Laura’s heart-flower had been a sunflower.

Derek finds her brown and dried out heart-flower and stares at it.

She put it on the porch, next to the rocking chair, so it could soak up all the sun.

When they had been younger, before the fire, Laura’s sunflower head reached towards the sky at six feet. She always used to keep it on the porch. After the fire, it shriveled to a more manageable size. Two feet.

She never left her heart-flower outside after that horrible night. She kept it on the window sills of their apartments, or in her car.

He leaves the heart-flower there and it’s still there months after Derek has buried his sister. His pack very careful to give it a wide berth.

iv.

Stiles choked off a shout when he saw Derek in his room, his dad asking what was up from the stairs.

Derek’s eyebrows go up, but he doesn’t do anything except touch the pot of a daffodil near his computer desk.

While he talks to his dad, trying to keep him from busting the door down and seeing a murder suspect in his bedroom, Stiles can’t help but think, _don’t let him find it_.

“You hide your heart-flower.” Derek says. He sounds surprised.

“It’s in plain sight, dude,” Stiles manages without choking on his spit.

He’s careful to keep his eyes away from his heart-flower, even as Derek touches the bowl it’s in.

“Interesting,” is all Derek says before the relative civility of their conversation ends and Derek begins making his requests sound like demands with some wall slamming thrown in for excitement.

v.

If you kill the heart-flower, you kill the person the flower also belongs to.

It’s difficult to kill a heart-flower and it is taboo for good reason.

The heart blackens, twists, shrivels.

Derek has seen a hunter carry his little pot with his heart-flower. It had been a strawberry flower. Dead strawberries were in the dirt, the flowers shriveled, the leaves black and the stem splitting.

It had made Derek’s heart thud in fear and he had quickly gone the other way.

It’s why he thought it strange Stiles hid his heart-flower.

No one in their right minds dared to go after heart-flowers as a cause of death. It isn’t until later, much later, and he’s staring at Isaac’s, Erica’s and Boyd’s heart-flowers he thinks he knows why.

Isaac’s heart-flower is a subspecies of the star of Bethlehem. It’s white with a black center and isn’t any bigger than a button. The flower grows in a bunch, in this case three, and is slowly blooming. Shy and delicate.

Erica’s heart-flower is a nigella. It’s blue, bright blue that draws the eye and made Derek want to touch it the first time he saw it. Just to see if it was real. It has these green spikes, or maybe hairs is a better word, that makes it look dangerous when in all honesty it really isn’t. He thinks of the scared girl he found in the hospital, a life of being unseen, and how she uses her new found confidence like a weapon.

Boyd’s heart-flower is a lily. Gloriosa lily. It’s white with a hot pink stripe coming from the mouth. It reminds Derek of a daddy long leg spider, its knees up to its ears. Boyd doesn’t hide his strength like he used to, but it still makes Derek think, he used to.

He wonders what his orchid says about him. How there are no blossoms or buds. How it’s just a green line.

He wonders what Stiles’ heart-flower is.

vi.

Scott has a chocolate cosmos for a heart-flower.

Stiles remembers how Scott used to carry it around everywhere when they were little. The flower smelling sweet and Scott beaming at it like it’s the best thing in the world.

It looks a lot like Ms. McCall’s.

Which is fitting.

The chocolate flower whispers a lot to Stiles about the type of people the McCalls are.

Sweet, dark, bittersweet, lovely, independent.

His dad has a cactus. It used to have a giant red flower growing from the top, but the petals dropped and the bud refused to grow again when his mom got sick. It’s a sturdy, dependable plant that can go weeks in a drought.

Some days, staring at the cactus on his dad’s desk at the station is the only respite he gets from the supernatural in his life that terrifies him every day.

(His mom’s heart-flower was a leucadendron. Tall with yellow petals and an ombre-ball in the middle. He remembers staring at in the garden where she _planted_ it amidst the daffodils and tulips, thinking, his mother’s heart is so beautiful and strange.)

Stiles knows what heart-flowers mean.

He stares at the pink lotus sitting in the glass water bowl by his bed every night, thinking about the delicate parts of himself that haven’t healed, the ease of simply pulling his lotus out of the water and leaving it on the table and how it’ll die.

He thinks about how he’s drowning every day.

vii.

Derek notices the buds on his heart-flower quite suddenly on a Thursday.

He stares at it, a little dumbfounded.

It’s been years, literally over a decade since the flower has held any buds and he knows what that says about the current state of his heart that it’s blooming again. He sits in the driver’s seat and stares at it for a long time. The sky darkens to nightfall as he stares and wonders, _what changed?_

He can’t think of anything that’s changed in the past few days that would cause his heart-flower to bloom again.

The alpha pack fled weeks ago, Peter gone with them, his pack stable and strong since then as well. He’s confused and freaked out because his heart-flower is growing again. It never grows. It was something Derek had accepted as fact, as law, when he’d been eighteen.

He watches it bloom. Tiny white petals unfurling, stretching like they’d only been napping for the past few years. There’s black specks on them and he can’t remember if they’ve always been there or not.

“Get a new house plant?” Jackson sneers.

“No.” Derek says and refrains from making a comment towards teenage stupidity because Jackson is shaking in the passenger seat, fear and pain in his every tremble.

For some reason, maybe the dismal public school system, his pack thought his heart-flower was bamboo. They look nothing alike, expect for the distinct lack of flowering. But Jackson has a point. Before his heart-flower had looked hardy, unbeatable but orchids are delicate things that the wrong temperature can kill and Derek hates that someone can look at it and see how easy it’d be to break him.

He takes it to the only place he thinks he can successfully hide it from hunters, werewolves and other supernatural beings alike.

“Oh my God!” Stiles yelps. “Can’t you tap on the window at the very least instead of waiting for me turn around like a creeper? I’m gonna move my desk in front of the window that way I can keep it in sight and you sneaky werewolvian people can’t sneak in anymore. Then you’ll be forced to use the door.”

Derek doesn’t smile, doesn’t let his face twitch in the slightest, but the orchid smells sweeter than it did before. He glances down it, surprised. Stiles follows his gaze.

“I didn’t think of you as the type to tote your heart-flower around.” Derek does smile this time. Sort of. It’s a slight show of teeth, more of a smirk because, of course, Stiles knew what Derek’s heart-flower was all this time, even though he distinctly remembers Stiles encouraging his pack’s belief it was bamboo not a week ago.

“I’m not.” He says.

He sets it next to a pink lotus, his orchid’s white petals making the lotus vibrant with life, that Stiles keeps next to his bed in a bowl of water. The orchid lets the lotus shine and he tilts his head staring at them before nodding, happy with the placement.

To annoy Stiles, he slips back out the window and ignores his calls for an explanation, “Right this second! Derek! You can’t leave me with it! This is like leaving your three week your old baby with the drugged out grandpa! Derek!”

The first few times Derek comes back to check on it, to see if it’s changed anymore, Stiles would pointedly mention how Derek should take it back since it’s _his_ heart-flower. Every time Stiles puts it in his hands, he always sets it back down next to the lotus before disappearing again. Stiles seems to pick up that Derek is treating it like some twisted game and eventually stops protesting it’s presence.

The pink lotus is soft and the last he saw it, the petals had been tight. Shielded and ready to bloom but something stopping it. At first he thought maybe it wasn’t in season yet. It wasn’t the only flower in Stiles’ room not bloomed fully. With every visit though, Derek comes to the realization as the lotus’ petals unfurl and stretch towards his orchid, it hadn’t bloomed fully because it was _Stiles’ heart-flower_.

It sends a warm furl of possessiveness through him that shocks him as much as it pleases him. His heart-flower made Stiles' bloom. Stiles bloomed for _him_.

"Yeah, well, don't be too proud of yourself." Stiles says to the floor. "It was bound to happen at some point. You and your stupid orchid just happened to be around when it did." His heart skips like Derek thought it would and he can't resist the curl of _his_ that races through him and causes the orchid to preen that little harder.

"My orchid is growing in your direction." Derek points out.

There is no longer just one lonely flower struggling to grow, but two full branches of the flowers, bending over the lotus that is facing it like the orchid is the sun. There's even orchid petals in the bowl with the lotus and when he carefully touches one, carefully avoiding the lotus, he can feel the tingling that tells him it's still connected to him and the flower, but the petals are choosing to be in the bowl.

"And shedding all over the place." Stiles agrees. "I don't think it wants to stay with me anymore. You should take it back. I mean, my dad's been asking questions since it's obviously someone's heart-flower and Scott has been giving it funny looks. You should take it. It’s _sad_ here. All falling apart and stuff."

"It likes it here." And he's not sure if he means just his orchid. "You're taking good care of it."

"It's _molting_." Stiles stresses. "How does that translate into good care?"

Derek smiles, small and sincere. "Maybe it just wants to conquer more ground." He runs a finger from the bottom of the stem to the tip and feels the tingle shoot up his arm. "Get to your heart maybe." He says more to himself.

"What?"

Derek shrugs and leaves. He trusts Stiles with heart-flower and he tries not to think about what else he's trusting Stiles with.

viii.

Stiles will deny it until his dying day, but he can't sleep anymore unless the last image is that of his pink lotus and Derek's white orchid.

He likes seeing them together, healthy and blooming and beautiful and it soothes his dreams and let's him have peace when nothing in his world is peaceful anymore. Not that Stiles cares or minds, but it can be draining knowing you could die tomorrow because a baddie is in town or your werewolf associates lose control. When he sees the heart-flowers side by side, trying their damnedest to reach other, he's reminded of the good things in life.

Things like love, rainy days, chocolate, the feel of grass, his dad, the crescent moon.

He doesn't think much of Derek's heart-flower once he's accepted the jerk-wolf won't be taking it back with him anytime soon. He goes about his daily routine which includes inviting Scott to his room for math and chemistry homework night.

"Who's is it?" Scott asks in disbelief, at the stairs' landing.

Stiles watches in confusion as his best friend lets his nose lead him to the two heart-flowers on his night table. The lotus is reaching up now, towards the orchid flowers overhead. White petals in the water and as fresh as the day they fell. Stiles secretly yearns the day a petal falls onto his lotus so he can feel the shiver of Derek's heart brushing his own. He wonders if he'll feel it.

Heart-flowers are a reflection of your heart, mind and soul, if you're a romantic. Scientists call them a reflection of mental and emotional health instead. As long as you're happy or content, the flower is healthy too. But if you're distraught the petals will close or brown. It depends person to person, emotion to emotion. When Derek tells Stiles to take care of it, he means, _take care of me_.

And don't let anyone with shady intentions near it.

Stiles is sure Scott doesn't count as shady, but he can't take the risk the dude might do something stupid and try and touch it.

"It smells good. Really good with your," Scott gestures at the lotus. Stiles has never out right said the lotus was his heart-flower and Scott was never the type to draw attention to something he obviously didn't want to talk about. "Sweet. Compatible."

"Cool," Stiles says and swallows past the lump of nerves growing. "Where did you want to start? Math or chem.?"

Scott lets him change the subject, but his eyes wander back to the two flowers numerous times.

ix.

Beacon Hills was safe from the supernatural terror for two weeks. A new record.

Derek honestly doesn't even notice the Black Cat. It avoids him and his pack is still learning and Black Cats were never high on his lesson plans so they didn't realize their bad luck was the mischievous nature of a Black Cat at work.

It starts innocently enough.

Erica loses her homework. Isaac can't find his lucky shirt for finals. Boyd stubs his toe repeatedly. Scott wears an old jacket with a girl's phone number that Allison takes exception to. Stiles gets a busted lip from someone lacrosse practice. Jackson keeps tripping. Lydia's GPA is posted next to her name rather than her student ID number. Allison's bowstring bruises her arm. Little things that could happen and do happen without the outside forces.

Then it gets not good. Dangerous.

Erica begins to seize again. Isaac keeps getting night terrors about his dad. Boyd keeps getting clipped by cars. A window slams down on Scott's fingertips, cutting them off. Stiles' psychologist notes are found all over the school. Jackson gets in a car accident, the entire front half of his car scrunched. Lydia has an allergy attack that almost stops her heart. Allison is seeing Kate everywhere she goes.

They don't come to Derek right away. They deal with their issues.

Erica starts her pills again. Isaac begins creeping into Scott's room at night. Boyd avoids the streets. Scott discovers his body parts will regenerate. Stiles laughs off all any attempts made to talk about the notes that label him suicidal. Jackson's parents buy him another car. Lydia avoids peanuts. Allison pretends she sees nothing.

No.

He goes to them.

He's going to Stiles' room, to check on his heart-flower and make sure the kid hasn't exploded his brain by trying to absorb the internet. Stiles isn't home. But his orchid is in the same place next to a sickly lotus and he's immediately aware there's a problem.

The lotus is black and Derek fears the worse, what could Stiles have done, when he touches the lotus petals and they're exactly as soft and smooth as they look, and Derek can feel a rush of sadness and anger that aren't his, and Derek hopes Stiles will forgive him one day, but he knows now the heart-flower isn't black because of taboo.

This is how he finds out a Black Cat is in Beacon Hills, circling his pack.

He calls Scott, Isaac and Jackson and they quickly spread the word to the rest of the pack.

When they gather, it's on the lacrosse field. There's relief on most of their faces like having a reason for the recent upset in their lives is better than it all happening by itself. Derek supposes in a way it is better. This way they have something to be pissed at.

"Black Cats are mischief spirits." Derek tells the group. "They poison your heart-flower and start with small, harmless pranks and if they get bored, the move on. If they don't, the pranks escalate." Usually he can’t shut them all up to teach them anything, yet they all remain quiet, withdrawn. "We can fix this. We just have to catch it and kill it."

"I am really starting to enjoy killing my problems." Erica says.

It loosens a smile from Scott and a snort from Jackson but the others remain unresponsive. Derek carefully looks at them all.

Erica is paler than he's seen her in a long time, no makeup on her face. Isaac is trembling in exhaustion. Boyd is holding himself tight and wary. Scott keeps rubbing his fingers and shooting looks at Allison. Stiles is hugging himself and looking down, and Derek really needs to talk to him. Jackson is holding a hollowed eyed Lydia's hand so tightly there's bruises forming under his grip. Allison has her eyes closed and seems to be thanking god under breath.

"You should all start carrying your heart-flowers around." Derek says quietly. "It'll make you feel better. Keep the Black Cat’s influence away."

"And the accidents?" Lydia asks.

Derek bares his teeth. "We'll handle it."

He explains the nature of Black Cats. How they find their victims. How they can keep each other safe. It takes a shaky hour for them to leave in groups. Isaac, Jackson and Scott. Lydia and Allison. Erica and Boyd. Derek clamps a hand down on Stiles, his neck to keep him in place, and Derek ignores the _mine_ that echoes through him when Stiles slumps against him.

He kneels next to Stiles, and gently grabs Stiles by the chin so he would look him in the eyes. "I owe you an apology." He says and even as much as he means it, it still comes out stiff. 

Stiles blinks in confusion. "What? Why? You couldn't have known a Black Cat was going around making everyone miserable."

"No, I couldn't have." He says quietly. "But I did touch your heart-flower."

Stiles sucks in a quick breath and the seconds it takes for Stiles to respond pass like minutes. "It's fine." And Stiles leans forward to sag against Derek's front. "It's okay."

x.

They catch the Black Cat while it stalks Scott, nearly drowning the boy and it was only Derek’s grip that kept his head above water in a river that hadn’t seen this much water in over fifty years. Stiles is the one that holds the bag full of hawthorn flowers and garlic for Boyd to stuff the Cat in. Isaac was somewhere in the woods looking after an Erica that seized again.

Its yowls put most of the werewolves to their knees, so Allison and Lydia take the bag and put it in another bag weighed down with heavy rocks that Jackson holds with agony passing his face with every yowl, and drop it in the river.

Stiles feels he should feel guilty for killing an animal, but he hasn't felt guilty for anything else he's killed the past few months and he was not going to start now.

Instead, he went home after all the big sighs of relief.

He showers, makes something to eat and flops into bed.

His heart-flower is no longer black. It's pink again, a little lighter than it used to and he scrunches his nose at the thought he's _fragile_. He's glad though. That it's back to normal.

The orchid no longer has any petals and that's something he's been calmly ignoring so he won't choke on his food. It isn't dead or naked. There's more buds growing and by tomorrow the orchid will be back to its gorgeous self, but today all the petals have fallen on the lotus, in the lotus bowl and around the night table. Was Derek really that freaked out by the Black Cat?

It isn't until he moves to a swipe the petals on the table off that he feels the tell tale tingle of a heart-flower race up his arm and make his head fuzzy due to the surge of _mine, mine, mine_ the petals vibrate with.

"Like ownership petals." He says to himself.

It makes little sense to him, but that's the closest he can describe the feel. The petals were deliberately released by Derek's heart-flower all over and it's not like he can't not touch them.

He presses the orchid petal between the lotus petals closer and feels a spark run up his arm that makes him jerk back. _Ours, ours, ours_ the petals seem to say and Stiles is going to need to have a serious conversation with Derek about possession and how he didn't have a receipt for Stiles so any claims to ownership were denied, have a nice day.

But it was nice.

The petals touching.  Like he could feel Derek and how attitude breathing down his neck at all times and it's a testament to his life that the idea of Derek and his snarls following him around makes him feel better. So maybe he doesn't say anything to Derek's stupid face when he swings around to check if his heart-flower is back to normal.

But he wouldn't be Stiles if he didn't make pointed comments about someone's greedy heart-flower trying to conquer everything Stiles, to which Derek, being Derek and Mr. Evasive, just smirks at and disappears back out the window.

Seriously, he’s a jerk-wolf and Stiles doesn’t know why he likes him so damn much.

xi.

Stiles expresses himself so much with his words, Derek doubts he remembers there's other ways of communicating.

Which why when Stiles suddenly _gets_ Derek, he's pleasantly surprised.

Stiles just huffs and throws himself down so close to Derek, the boy might as well be in his lap and glares at everyone's flabbergasted stares. His arms are crossed over his chest and Derek chuckles. "You could have said something." Stiles says darkly. "Or done caveman drawings. Finger spelled it to me. Charades. _Anything_."

Derek shrugs and outright laughs when Stiles punches him.

"I gave you an opening! You could have said," Stiles deepens his voice. "'Yes, Stiles, my orchid has claimed your lotus and your heart as my property. Submit now.' Instead of innocently letting me believe I had a choice left in any of this."

"Wait, is this a love confession?" Scott asks, his eyes wide and trained on his friend. "Because if this is, I don't think I want to be here."

"I don't think that's how love confessions go." Isaac says after a deliberate second of thought.

"How would you know?" Jackson sneers. "It's not like you've experienced any."

"Shut it, Nicholas Sparks boy." Erica snaps to Isaac's defense.

Boyd sighs and releases Scott from his headlock, and Derek approves of how sensitive the boy is to his mate's emotions. It’d be useful in their next fight, that the two are so entwined.

"What was that, Reyes?" Jackson gets in Erica's face.

"I think she insulted your manliness." Stiles says helpfully. "I mean everyone knows Lydia has made you watch _The Notebook, The Last Song, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember_ ,"

"There is nothing wrong with _A Walk to Remember_!" Scott defends.

Stiles continues after a quick roll of his eyes. "and _Dear John_."

Erica laughs in Jackson's face. "Oh my god, when's the last time you've seen your balls?"

Derek watches with interest as Jackson shifts and attacks Erica, who is too busy laughing to defend herself, making Boyd step in and grabbing Jackson by the scruff and throwing him, right into Scott, who decides it was deliberate and jumps Boyd's back when the large teen bends to give Erica a hand, which results in Isaac joining in because Boyd and Erica fight dirty. In short order, the werewolves are wrestling and biting each other and Derek lifts an eyebrow at a satisfied Stiles.

"What? They were eavesdropping!" He says defensively.

Derek nods before continuing their previous conversation. "You did have a choice."

"Your heart-flower Stockholmed mine." Stiles denies. "I was powerless to resist."

"You bloomed for me." Derek counters with.

"Oh my god. What are they saying? Ow! Sonnuva bitch! Who bite my ear?!" Scott's voice says from the pile.

"I'm pretty sure Disney and Hallmark would object." Isaac says. "Ow! Erica!"

"This is an awful love story between a werewolf and an admittedly attractive nerd. This is the stuff Disney is _made of_."

"Reyes has the hots for Stiles?" Jackson says with a laugh. "Sure you can measure up, Boyd?"

" _Had_ , Whittemore." The smell of blood finding Derek's nose after a sickening crunch.

"But it's Stiles!" Scott whines. "And Derek! Ow! Remove your claws from my stomach!"

"Haven't you ever seen _Beauty and the Beast_?"

"My nose!" Jackson roars.

"Fuck! That was my eye!"

"Because of your heart-flower." Stiles says. "It made very convincing arguments."

Derek hmms, and pushes the wrestling mass that was rolling towards them away. "It could be argued it was more of Lima syndrome than Stockholm."

"What's that?" Comes Scott's panicked reaction.

"Mind your own business!" Erica grunts and Scott yelps again.

Stiles narrows his eyes before beaming. "Your orchid started to grow because of me?" He sounds too smug and delighted for Derek's liking.

"It was bound to grow at some point." He says, dragging words once said to him.

"Not the hair, McCall!" Jackson snarls.

"I'm not touching your hair!" Scott protests.

"I'm not sorry!" Isaac shouts.

"So what your saying is I was asking to be sieged by you." Stiles concludes. "That you were just answering to lotus taunting?"

"Yes." Derek decides. "I was provoked."

"Into loving me and making me fall in love with you. Just so everyone is clear." Stiles sums up.

"Oh my God!"

"Stop ruining the moment! I'm going to gag you with my shirt!"

" _Erica_."

"Keep your shirt on, Reyes!"

"Yes." Derek agrees.

"I can live with that." Stiles nods. "What I can't live with is I've reached third base with your heart-flower,"

"I didn't need to know that!"

"But we haven't made it to first base."

"You should fix that." Derek agrees.

Stiles grins stupidly, like he couldn't believe his luck. "Just try and stop me." And used his mouth to declare the Stilinski Army as the victors in this bizarre courtship of theirs.

 

In order are Stiles', Derek's, Laura's, Isaac's, Erica's heart-flowers:

 

Boyd's, Scott and Ms. McCall's, the Sheriff's and Mama Stilinski's heart-flowers:

Excuse any failure to find the right pictures to match the descriptions in the text.

**Author's Note:**

> I own none of the above images.


End file.
